By Juliana June Rasul

ON TV, he's a trash-talking loser who makes girls cringe when he chats them up.

But Entourage actor Jerry Ferrara will have you know that he's nothing like that in person.

'I'm way more mature,' he told reporters in a conference call recently from his home in Los Angeles.

In the show, Ferrara, 29, is Turtle, the sneakers and girl-crazy chubby fourth member of fictitious actor Vincent Chase's flashy entourage.

The fifth season airs on HBO (StarHub Channel 60) at 10.30pm on Wednesdays.

Although just a sidekick on the show, Turtle is so beloved by fans that Ferrara says many have come up to him to ask him questions they would've posed to his character.

'People ask me out to clubs, ask me to do shots with them. What they don't realise is I'm not a party animal, you know? I have more ambition than that,' he said.

'I do think I have more of a conscience than Turtle.'

Before Entourage, Ferrara did one-off guest roles in B-grade sitcoms like Grounded For Life.

In 2004, he joined the cast of Entourage, a show loosely based on the experiences of actor Mark Wahlberg and his own real life posse of friends. Wahlberg serves as the show's executive producer.

Sidelined and with negligible romantic prospects since the show's debut, Turtle starts to see some action in this latest season, thanks to a run-in with The Sopranos' actress Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who played herself in an episode.

Although the episode ends with her ditching him, in real life, the pair have been dating since they met on the show.

Sigler returns

He also revealed that Sigler will return for the show's sixth season and that Turtle will finally have his first major relationship on the show.

When asked about their off-screen relationship, though, Ferrara stayed true to his word about having a conscience and declined to elaborate.

'Look, no offence, but private stuff is private stuff,' he explained. 'We can talk about how bad my acting is or whatever, but a personal relationship is not really up for judging.'

He would only say that they are 'extremely happy with each other'.

He is also relieved that his character finally gets to display a different side with the emergence of the relationship in the plot.

'With Turtle, it used to be all about the physical stuff with girls,' he said. 'It's nice that he's now in an adult relationship. I'm excited to see what I can do with that material.'

Other things in the show remain the same, though.

The four boys still jet off once in a while to glamorous locations - they went to Cannes last season and opened this season on a Mexican island - and episodes are filled with surprising guest stars and beautiful women.

Though it is as much fun as it looks, Ferrara says it's a lot of hard work too.

'Everyone thinks it's so fun to work on the show, but we work 14, sometimes 16-hour days,' he said.

It helps, though, that the actors have formed something of a real-life entourage of their own.

When they're not shooting, Ferrara says the guys are 'still very much a part of each others' lives'.

He plays golf with Kevin Dillon, who plays Johnny 'Drama' and Adrian Grenier, who plays Vincent Chase, and they drop by each others' houses 'just to hang out' all the time.

'We're just one big family,' he said.

This article was first published in The New Paper.